English

Operationally accessible bounds on fluctuations and entropy production in periodically driven systems

Statistical Mechanics 2019-06-25 v1

Abstract

For periodically driven systems, we derive a family of inequalities that relate entropy production with experimentally accessible data for the mean, its dependence on driving frequency, and the variance of a large class of observables. With one of these relations, overall entropy production can be bounded by just observing the time spent in a set of states. Among further consequences, the thermodynamic efficiency both of isothermal cyclic engines like molecular motors under a periodic load and of cyclic heat engines can be bounded using experimental data without requiring knowledge of the specific interactions within the system. We illustrate these results for a driven three-level system and for a colloidal Stirling engine.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1904.08807,
  title  = {Operationally accessible bounds on fluctuations and entropy production in periodically driven systems},
  author = {Timur Koyuk and Udo Seifert},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1904.08807},
  year   = {2019}
}